Free Key Lime Pie Murder by Joanne Fluke Page A

Society booth from eight to closing on Saturday night, aren’t you?”
    Hannah took a deep breath and stifled the complaints she wanted to make. She’d agreed to help out in the Lake Eden Historical Society booth when her mother had asked, assuming she’d be passing out literature and taking contributions. But Delores had tricked her. What Hannah had really agreed to do was sit on a stool in a frilly dress while contributors threw balls at a target that would open a trapdoor and dunk her into a vat of cold water.
    â€œHannah?” Delores prodded.
    â€œYes, Mother. I said I would and I’ll be there.”
    â€œThank you, dear. And thank you for the coffeecake. I’ll have a piece when I take my next break. Chocolate and cherries are my favorite combination.”
    â€œI know,” Hannah said. And then she headed out the door to tell Michelle that she was being transplanted from her mother’s guest room to Hannah’s guest room in the condo, and she didn’t have the slightest idea what their mother was writing.

Chapter Six   
    H annah woke up with a cat on her head. Moishe had climbed up in an attempt to wake her so she’d shut off the alarm. When she didn’t sit up quickly enough, he batted at several unruly curls that were sticking out over her ear. And when that didn’t work, he gave an ear-splitting yowl that made his wishes abundantly clear.
    â€œOkay, okay,” Hannah groaned, reaching out with one sleep-leaden arm to depress the alarm button on the clock. But the clock wasn’t where it was supposed to be, on the table right next to her bed. The bedside lamp wasn’t there either, and Hannah encountered a perfectly smooth surface. What was going on?
    Moishe yowled again, and Hannah realized that what she’d heard wasn’t her alarm clock at all. It was coming from the television, and the clock belonged to a starlet whose face she didn’t recognize. Hannah watched for a moment through partially closed eyes. She’d fallen asleep on the couch last night during Casablanca . Since this wasn’t a young Ingrid Bergman, Hannah figured she was at least one, probably two features past her bedtime.
    The starlet reached out to turn off the alarm clock and climbed out of bed with the sheet wrapped around her like a toga. As she walked across the bedroom set and disappeared through a door, Hannah wondered if anyone had ever pulled the sheet off the bed for modesty’s sake while they were alone in their bedroom. It seemed silly. You’d just have to re-make the bed from scratch.
    After one glance at the time, which was subtly displayed at the lower right-hand corner of the screen, Hannah clicked off the television with the remote control. It was almost four-thirty in the morning. Since she always set her alarm clock, the one in her bedroom, to go off at a quarter to five, it seemed silly to go to bed for fifteen minutes and count the seconds she had left before it was really time to get up.
    A compelling scent wafted in from the kitchen to help Hannah make up her mind. The timer on her coffee pot had activated, and her morning brew was ready.
    â€œCoffee,” she pronounced in a voice that was midway between a groan and a prayer. She needed caffeine, and she needed it fast, before the specter of another hot, muggy day would drive her to turn on the window air conditioner the former owners had installed in the bedroom and sleep until the unseasonable June heat wave headed east, or west, or anywhere far away from Lake Eden, Minnesota.
    Hannah stood up and shivered slightly. She’d fallen asleep in her favorite summer sleep outfit, an extra-long, extra-large tank top in such an eye-popping shade of magenta that she hoped Moishe’s vet, Dr. Hagaman, was right and cats truly were color-blind. Not only was her sleepwear the wrong color choice for anyone with red hair, it was plastered to her skin in a manner her mother might call